1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to an improved method of and system for mitigating payments risk, liquidity risk and systemic risk in the settlement of foreign exchange transactions and many other payments-based transactions.
2. Brief Description of Prior Art
The foreign exchange (FX) markets in our world trade over $1 trillion worth of capital currencies daily. Economic order throughout the global banking system generally requires that parties engaging in such foreign exchange transactions make payments due thereunder in a timely manner to prevent default and the consequences associated therewith.
As shown in FIG. 1, the conventional method of making payments in connection with foreign exchange transactions, takes place over a standard 3 day cycle. On the Trade Date, various foreign exchange transactions are dealt either by telephone or electronic execution system between a User of the GPM system and a market counterparty. This is followed by the exchange of MT300 messages, in a prescribed industry data format, via a global bank communications network maintained by the Society for Worldwide Inter-bank Financial Transmissions (S.W.I.F.T). This global bank communications network, commonly referred to as the SWIFT network, is a proprietary value added network (VAN) which use electronic data interchange (EDI) message format standards. The International Standards Organization (ISO) recognizes S.W.I.F.T. as the organization responsible for the promulgation and maintenance of these message standards within the global banking industry.
Once the MT300 messages are matched in each party's back office, each party generates a payment instruction for the sold currency and a pre-advice for the bought currency to a bank's own branch, or a correspondent bank holding an account for the bank in a foreign currency. Where banks make payment using correspondent banks, they undertake payment for their own account, whether or not they are involved in an underlying transaction as principal or agent of a non-bank market participant. The message types most important to payments include the MT200 for own account payments, MT202 for general commercial payments, and MT210 Pre-advice of expected receipt of funds.
The correspondent bank uses the S.W.I.F.T. network to confirm transactions in an account back to the account holder. The most important messages for this purpose are the MT900 advice of debit to account, MT910 advice of credit to account, and MT950 statement of daily account activity. In short, correspondent banking is a mechanism used by banks to effect payments in currencies other than their own.
All payment message types reference the paying bank, the account holder (if any), the receiving bank, the counterparty account holder (if any), and the unique number identifying the underlying transaction using the prescribed industry data format. Messages to correspondent banks are sent using the S.W.I.F.T. network. Messages in domestic payments systems are sent using the network facilities and formats prescribed by the individual domestic payment system.
Payments within domestic payment systems are currently managed by the construction of a queue of payments messages for a particular day within a bank directly linked to a domestic payment system. Liquidity management software is used to control the flow of payments messages from the queue into the domestic payment system for clearance, to monitor balances at the central bank, and to monitor payment conditions vis-a-vis other directly participating banks. The liquidity management software allows payments to proceed according to the priority of individual payment messages and the liquidity available in the system.
Settlement Date is normally two business days after Trade Date for spot transactions in foreign exchange, and can be much later for forward transactions. On the Settlement Date, each branch of a bank operating the link to the domestic payment system for a currency, or each correspondent bank acting as a nostro for other banks' payments in a currency, will construct a payments queue containing all the messages requiring payment on that date.
Where the payments are to be made via a real-time gross payment system or other system accommodating payment instructions on a real-time (as opposed to batch process) basis, the payments are released one by one as sufficient liquidity in the clearing account of the bank permits. Liquidity management software is used by banks connecting to these systems to keep track of the balance in the clearing account within the payments system and release payments as liquidity permits. Also, such software will generally ensure that sufficient balance or credit exists in the account of the account holder to cover the payment. Such software shall hereinafter be described as “liquidity/payments manager.” Payments made from the queue reduce the balance, while payments received from other banks in the system increase the balance. The process continues until all payments on the queue are sent.
Banks acknowledge payments and receipts to their correspondent banking account holders using the S.W.I.F.T. network, and to non-bank account holders using various methods. For correspondent banks, an MT900 is sent following debit of a payment from a client's account. An MT910 is sent following credit of a received payment to a client account. At the end of the day, an MT950 statement of account activity is sent to confirm every debit and credit through the account during the day, and the opening and closing balances, using an industry standard data format.
The Reconciliation Date is normally the day following the Payment Date. Institutions active in the foreign exchange markets typically take all the MT950 statements from all branches and correspondent banks acting on their behalf for settlement, and provide these statements as inputs to a batch process for reconciliation. This process determines whether for each payment made in respect of a trade, whether a counterpayment was duly received as expected. If payment has been made, but no counterpayment received, then the party is at risk for the gross amount of the payment as an unsecured creditor of the counterparty. An exceptions report is generated as a result of the reconciliation batch process, which is used for querying missed payments with counterparties, generally by telephone. Only after a query (often made difficult by geographical distance and time zone differences) can a decision be made about the credit-worthiness or potential default of a counterparty. As a result it can be two or three days following missed payments before a counterparty is declared in default and further payments are suspended. As a result of this process overall, the risk to a foreign exchange market participant, arising because payments are typically instructed on a transactional basis (as obligations are incurred) and are processed independent of other transactions which would result in expected receipts, may be as much as three days gross value of payments to a counterparty. This risk is known as “payments risk”.
Payments risk may well exceed the capital of a bank or other financial institution, raising a potential that a counterparty failure could cause their own insolvency, arising from the difficulty that financial institutions are likely to have raising funding rapidly to cover a shortfall should expected receipts fail to materialize on the payment date. This risk is known as “liquidity risk”.
Liquidity risk, in turn, may perpetuate a systemic impact throughout the chain of counterparties active in the financial markets, arising from payment failure due to liquidity problems, through a chain of co-dependent payments transactions. This risk is known as “systemic risk” and is a principal concern of central bankers and supervisors in overseeing the strength of capital markets. Payments risk, liquidity risk, and systemic risk associated with participation in payments systems are summarised in the table of FIG. 2.
Cross-border payments risk in the foreign exchange markets has been exacerbated by recent trends in the markets. Many smaller participants now trade directly in the markets through electronic foreign exchange trading systems. The past five years have seen the market share of the top dealing banks fall from approximately 60 percent of the market to less than 40 percent of the market, demonstrating their displacement by more active smaller institutions. These smaller institutions tend to have lower credit ratings, and so present higher levels of payments risk to their counterparties. Additionally, there has been a shift toward increased trading volumes in the currencies of emerging economies. These currencies are generally less liquid and more volatile, particularly in conditions of general market uncertainty, and so present higher liquidity risk and systemic risk in the event of a financial failure.
In addition, there has been a movement toward more rapid settlement of transactions, with some transactions now settling on the same day as trading or the next day, as opposed to the customary two days following trade date. The shorter settlement times put pressure on banks involved in payments as they increase uncertainty as to liquidity, and are often inconsistent with existing systems for trade processing and reconciliation.
Even in a single currency, there is a more general payment risk associated with banks and commercial entities making payments to parties who are expected to make unrelated payments back on the same day. Currently, all general commercial payments on behalf of account holders are made irrespective of whether expected receipts actually occur. The result is that financial market participants and others incur credit risk on their payments which can result in large losses in the event of the counterparty's insolvency. This risk is possibly increasing as financial institutions are disintermediated from financial markets, with many institutions dealing directly with one another on a regular basis through electronic communications networks (ECN) and otherwise.
Hitherto, a number of prior art systems and methods have been proposed for mitigating or managing the various types of risk associated with making payments in connection with foreign exchange transactions in our global financial capital market system.
One proposed method of managing payment risk involves the “contractual netting” of payment flows, whereby parties agree to net all payment obligations for any given date and only effect net payments to one another.
Contractual netting requires that both parties sign an enforceable legal agreement to net their obligations, that the parties agree daily the specific amounts of the payment flows in settlement of transactions, and that the parties maintain systems for the reconciliation of payments against transactions to ensure that underlying transactions have been settled. Supervisors generally require independent legal opinions supporting netting enforceability before conferring any benefit of risk reduction for capital adequacy purposes. In consequence of its complexity and legal uncertainty in many countries, contractual payments netting embraces only one-quarter of transactions in foreign exchange markets.
In connection with the above method of risk management, a system referred to as FXNET exists for the calculation of bilateral netting exposures and net payment amounts in traded currencies for its participants. This system is designed to reduce the operational complexity of bilateral netting on a daily basis as between its users. It has less than 100 bank users.
In addition, two other systems have been proposed for providing multi-lateral netting, or clearing house, operations to the foreign exchange markets. The first system is the MultiNet system which never became operational, and was abandoned in late 1996. The second system is the Exchange Clearing House (ECHO) which was operational for several years, but operations were suspended in 1998 because they were deemed uneconomic.
CLS Bank has proposed an alternative method of managing risk in connection with foreign exchange transaction payment systems. This method involves developing a clearinghouse which seeks to provide a tiered system for clearing foreign exchange settlements, ending with value-for-value settlement of foreign exchange transactions through the agency of a special purpose bank with accounts at participating central banks. CLS Bank's clearinghouse is only effective for transactions wholly in the currencies admitted to the system (i.e. 7 currencies are proposed for initial operations), only market participants joining the CLS system or clearing through participants, and only for foreign exchange settlements. The CLS system requires substantial investment and changes to existing systems for reporting and matching of transactions, and for payment and liquidity management among participants. Even if CLS Bank were to settle all eligible foreign exchange trades for all its 60 shareholder banks, this would only address the risk on 27 percent of foreign exchange market transactions.
In summary, prior art methods of and methods for managing risk in connection with FX and other payments transactions throughout the world suffer from the following shortcomings and drawbacks: they require agreement of the transaction counterparty; they do not extend to non-bank counterparties; they are complex and difficult to implement; and they do not adequately enable a typical foreign exchange or other market participant to control the risk arising in respect of the plurality of its counterparties, currencies and payment types.
Consequently, there is a great need in the art to provide an improved method of and system for mitigating risk associated with participation in payments systems involved in settling foreign exchange and other financial transactions.